Damn Doily

The doily has been in time out.
A week or two ago I finished extending with the goal of reaching 12 inches and got 11 inches instead.
Grrr.
The original pattern calls for 30 rows for the central spiral before working the edging.
Because it is a spiral, I'm having a bit of trouble measuring the row gauge. So I made an educated guess and extended the center out to 50 rows before starting the edging.
I wet it and then stretched it as much as I could and laid it out on a towel to dry, and it was 11 inches.
Causing me to ignore it in favor of more cooperative projects. However, this is for someone else, who is paying for the thread, so I should get cracking.

Not a Total Fool
Of course, if this was a crocheted doily, with crochet's lovely independent stitches, I would have been able to get an accurate measurement of the diameter before I blocked it. Since it's a knit doily, I can only stretch it flat on the needles so much, which is no help at all. Most of the time it is hanging down between the needles in a rather snood-like fashion.
Having learned from attempt number one, after I finished the edging, I didn't cut the thread. Instead I clipped a stitch marker to it so I wouldn't have to worry about weaving in another end.
At some point in recent memory, I had started the process of pulling out the edging. I had pulled out the crochet loops and had all the stitches back on the needles, but there were two rows to pick out. sigh.
Last night I picked it up again and spent half an hour picking out those rows. I know it was half an hour because I was watching Men In Black on TV, making it easy to keep an eye on the clock on the cable box.
I believe I was only able to work forward for 2 rows before it was bedtime.

Struggling Forward
I'm going to work the center out for 10 more rows. I have no idea if that will be enough since I can't figure out where to measure for a row count. sob. I wish there was a way to measure it more accurately without having to work all the edging, etc. At one point I had transferred it to my 24" Addi Turbo circular, but even that didn't seem to work out well for measuring.
(I didn't want to work it on the circular. I had become accustomed to the end of the needles providing a break between pattern repeats; something that would have been lost on the circ.)

Questionable Needle Size
A concern I've had since I started expanding it is whether I'm on the right size needle. I'm using US1, but I wonder if I should be on US2. It appears that even when I worked it the first time around I didn't know what size needle I was on. My Ravelry project page says US1. Although I remember changing that information, I don't remember why I would have. You would think if my Ravelry notebook said US2 I would have said, "Oh that must be what I was using" and leave it, but no, I changed the needle size.
Needle size is an issue because if I had been on the US2 originally and now I'm on the US1 my gauge might be different, which would explain why my clever calculations of just adding 20 rows to get to 12 inches didn't work out.
Although the gauge can't be terribly different since I'm not seeing a glaring difference between the original center and the section I've added.
I'm considering working the next doily on US2 from start to finish, but then what if it ends up too big?
Sometimes a girl can't win.